Among the nation's popular authors - without a doubt when it comes to sales, reader comments and followers - is one who quietly has called Lubbock home since moving here from "the Twin Cities" (Minneapolis-St. Paul) 12 years ago.

If a number of avid readers in West Texas fail to recognize more than two dozen exciting novels penned by Heather Killough-Walden, along with occasional positions on New York Times and USA Today best-seller lists, the reason is obvious.

Like this journalist, they were late to embrace the quality and quantity of electronic books, otherwise known as eBooks.

It turns out Killough-Walden, born in Sacramento, California, has often moved and, according to her blog, hopes to one day make her home in a city with professional hockey.

But the author - along with her husband, Eric, and their daughter, born in Lubbock - is here because of Texas Tech.

Eric is a neuroscientist working as a professor of information systems at Tech's business school.

In the meantime, the author, fighting a litany of pains and allergies while traveling around the world, occasionally leaves Lubbock for as long as six months to conduct research for her series of books described as everything from paranormal, fantasy and thrillers (all three sometimes dealing with romance), to such non-romantic thrillers as "Redeemer," "The October Trilogy" and "Hell Bent."

Her characters - and I admit to having rapidly consumed a fraction of her titles - include everyone from archangels to vampires and werewolves, a number boasting an erotic, sensual approach the author sometimes worries may upset readers in more conservative markets.Her books also introduce phantoms, goblins and any number of villains.

What make the works of Killough-Walden so very strong are not just her brilliant originality and beautifully descriptive phrasing, from her merging of blue and black to - at least in an early chapter of "Warrior's Angel," my own current challenge - marvelous wording when describing a prepared gala before guests even arrive.

Her writing, before unveiling characters, commands attention.

The author dodges well-traveled paths. Her characters reflect gray, rather than black and white, worlds. They are plucked neither from our earliest thoughts of horror, nor from equally predictable Hammer films.

Killough-Walden has an undergraduate degree in philosophy, with a concentration in religious studies and a minor in archaeology from Louisiana State University. She then attended law school on a full scholarship at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota.

Plans were altered when she "transferred down here after my first year because my husband was hired at Tech."

She emailed, "I did not finish law school (thank goodness) due to being pregnant with my daughter. She pretty much saved my life. Even though I was doing well in law school, I would have been emotionally miserable as a lawyer. But I started writing more often during her pregnancy, and made that my focus."

Make no mistake. Like many fine writers, Killough-Walden found her heart - and quite often her spirit - broken, thanks to the arrival of crushing rejection letters, some quite cruel.

Again, like many others, she filed, rather than trashed, those rejections.

They were meant to inspire.

They did not always do that.

But Killough-Walden fails to credit her success to creative writing courses.

She said, "This is only my opinion and my personal experience. I feel that if you have the real talent to be a writer, creative writing courses will not be able to teach you anything you don't already intuitively know. And if you don't have the talent to be a writer already, then it is a good bet that it also isn't your passion.

"You probably have not been writing your entire life, driven by the power of words, the open landscape of a blank piece of paper, the absolute bliss of a newly sharpened pencil or uncapped pen in your hand.

"And if it isn't your absolute breathing passion, then don't bother trying to be a writer. You have to want it almost more than life itself. They will make you fail otherwise. They will get you down. You'll end up quitting."

Assuming any writer worth his salt already can identify references to "they," she concluded, "The only way to beat the nearly overwhelming odds and succeed as a writer is with a healthy dose of natural born talent, and more willpower than God."

Killough-Walden has both.

She told a reporter with Sugary Spicy Reads, "The liquid in my veins is composed of white blood cells, red blood cells and words."

That does not mean fate or life, either one, made it easy.

She had worked with a print publisher who created so much stress that, when one of Killough-Walden's own eBooks emerged onto the New York Times chart, she told a reporter, "I could not even say 'yay' or congratulate myself."

Mind you, even as we discuss Killough-Walden's feelings about eBooks, surely many have approached her about the skill with which she designs covers for her own eBooks.What? You assumed a team did this?

Do eBooks even have real jackets? Or are they magical marketing dreams? I know only that this author has taste, as well as talent, and her images quantify her stories.

But how close was Killough-Walden to doom? She wrote query letters to major publishing firms for a decade. Even now in the minds of many, she said, "Some believe eBooks only become literature if written on a dead tree."

What one considers amazing is not only that Killough-Walden has sold so many eBooks, but that she also devotes so much time to staying in touch with the thousands of fans who love her books.

She explained, "The reason I stay in touch with all my readers, and interact on a personal basis with all of my fans, is because I care. I honestly do. I know how that sounds, but these people make what I do possible.

"They are the wind beneath my wings, and I don't take that for granted."

Most indie authors can afford no help, she said. "I am very lucky. I came into Kindle from the ground up, in its very first stages. When its train left the station, I was on it.

"This, along with my writing ability and the subject matter I wisely chose, made for a very fortunate cocktail."

She said, "If eBooks had been allowed at the time, 'The Third Kiss,' in its original publication, would have made the New York Times charts. It's the reason my agent originally called and asked if he could represent me."

Killough-Walden explained, "If I wanted to, I could afford a little help. But I'm hanging in there and have not caved in yet.

"Plus, I'm a control freak."

Now, however, the eBook market, she says, is flooded.

"Normally, books that make the New York Times top listings as eBooks are also print books," she said.

"It is an extremely competitive market.

"Extremely."

william.kerns@lubbockonline.com

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